This morning in a tailspin at 3 a.m., watching the world go up in flames, I was heartsick when a distant nephew posted white power merchandise to his social media wall. He is the latest but by no means the first of my family members to wear their bigotry like a badge. As much as I believe my mother and father and all the relatives who came before and aft are good people, still, these bits of ugliness have been recurrent through the generations of my family.

The ugliness is in me, too. “We all are prejudiced,” a friend reminds me when I try to deny my own biases and I have to admit his point even though certain words, certain thoughts and declarations, have always felt wrong and ugly to my ear, on my tongue and in my heart. The flavor of bigotry is bitter and rotten and chemical. My parents had a nickname for my favorite nut in the bowl, and the words made a terrible taste, like the time I mistakenly chewed a bug. When once, in the back row of the school bus, I tried to impress the boys by joining them in telling n-word “jokes,” I could tell by the taste on my tongue what a rotten deal I’d made. The shame was instant, the laughter ugly. Still there is bias in my unfiltered reactions, how I cross the street at night to avoid passing groups of young black men at the bus stop or street corner, or feel more alert or worried if I encounter the stereotypical “scary black man” when walking alone at night (though encountering any man at all requires vigilance). The complexities of views and influences are a challenge to untangle, tricky to navigate, and easy to bungle. Already I may have gone too far, said too much. I am trying to look a truth square in the eye, but must be careful not to make things worse.

My mother was an unapologetic separatist, though would never have labeled herself such, but more than once I heard her expound on her belief that the races shouldn’t mix. For the sake of the children, she said, but it always sounded ugly. I never did like that “mammy” cookie jar from the farm in Michigan. I did not like it when my mom called the figure a “pick-a-ninny,” or talked about “colored people,” or when she said that she “didn’t like the looks of” Ray Charles or Aretha Franklin when they appeared on her afternoon talk shows. In later years, gradually, she seemed to change, a little. The ladies of The View helped her see the president as charming and smart and good, and she adored the first lady. Even she could see the Obamas were decent and well-intentioned people, that the slurs were unjust and ugly, that Fox News had it all wrong. The Trayvon Martin verdict depressed her. So wrong and unjust. I like to think she opened her heart, toward the end of her life. I like to remember these instances of a more tolerant view.

My mother’s three daughters and two sons reflected her views to small or large degree, and we all found common ground in rejecting some of her more outrageous biases. And we all were exposed to bigoted thoughts and ideas, as much as we might try to bury them or push them away or insist that they didn’t affect us. Now I watch with an aching heart as bigotry infects a younger generation. It’s not just the distant nephew, but also a closer one, and it’s others I don’t see every day. But I see the jokes they think are funny, the obscene things they say about my president (the 44th), and their enthusiastic support for the new laws raining down upon us. “Build the Wall,” they chant. “Lock Her Up.” This attitude suits them, and they are giddy at the idea that they don’t have to watch what they say anymore.

I must reconcile this state of things with my fondness for these young men, the tenderness I know is in them, the love for their children and mothers and grandmothers. It seems this ugly trait in my family line is still borne proudly by some, which is all the more reason to love their children that much more, read to them, share music and art and other points of view. For if I instinctively recoiled from that hateful poison when I was just a little girl, then others must, too. If my mother, after 80-some years of outspoken bigotry, could turn the tide of her own thinking to a more loving view, then change really is possible. I remain alert for the smallest signs of hope.

Photo: Portrait of a Young Girl With Her Dog by the Sea. Adolf Pirsch (1858-1929) [Public domain]